by A. L. Brooks
‘You did not warn us of this,’ Gargaron heard himself croak.
‘No. This one I kept to myself. But fret not, giant, I knew this were coming thus used my time in Skitecrow’s offices well. I have some gadgets now that might aid me.’
‘What can we do?’ Locke called.
‘You can flee!’ came Hawkmoth’s reply. ‘Take Mama Vekh. Fly southeast to Dark Wood. If I live through this I shall catch you up. Hurry now!’
4
Gargaron took hold of Drenvel’s Bane once more. He would not leave the sorcerer. He gripped it two-handed. He would bring down the wall of bars that contained him. Yet he could not summon it.
‘Go!’ Hawkmoth yelled at them.
Gargaron tried again, concentrating his will. But he could not wake it. He were spent. Hor’s hammer remained dormant. He slot the handle inside his pack and took his sword into hand. ‘We’ll not leave you here!’ he called.
‘This be not about me,’ Hawkmoth called back. ‘This be for the realm. Get Mama Vekh to her daughters. Hurry now and leave, damn you!’
It were here the Wardens marched toward him.
5
Melai watched from the top of the tower. She saw the coming horde sweep toward her friends. She saw Locke and Gargaron take their steeds to the base of the tower and watched the hordes swarm them.
She could sit and watch no longer.
She flew down tower’s stairwell and found the lower floor doorway awash with enormous doll-like creatures, Locke and Gargaron hard up against them.
Melai unleashed a volley of rapid fire Loniyahd acid-tipped arrows into the dolls. On impact, the dolls were riddled with a dozen pockmarks that melted outwards in expanding holes; parts of them dripping away until their forms were so compromised they crumpled inwards and dropped, twitching in the snow, their limbs melting from them. But there were too many for her to counter.
‘We need hold this ground,’ Gargaron called, trying to get a glimpse through the horde of Hawkmoth’s position. ‘We need to work out some way to help our sorcerer.’
6
The Wardens attacked skillfully, viciously, ferociously. But Hawkmoth knew them, had seen them dispatch forbidden Brothers many times and thus had an advantage over their tactics. Grief, who wielded its mace, were swift of feet, and were deceptive. It made first move, as Hawkmoth anticipated, shifting from its position almost unseen. Hawkmoth knew it would dart behind him, as he had witnessed it do so many times; both Sorrow with its morning star, and Pain, with its halberd, would attack while he were distracted.
Hawkmoth also knew that he would be caught short with many of his conventional spells. He had some of Skitecrow’s toys to his arsenal to help him, though if they failed, well he had been a long time away from Sanctuary and a long time away from conventional learning; thus he had picked up an array of tricks in his years banished that he would not have learned had he remained here. And so simply, he went to town on them.
Anticipating Grief’s movement to the tee he sprung sideways and both Grief’s mace and Sorrow’s morning star crashed together where his head had been but a sunflare prior, giving of a shower of sparks. Thus he danced aside and leapt high into the air as Pain’s halberd struck out at him. He evaded it well and rolled, ducking beneath another sweeping attack by Sorrow, and Hawkmoth threw Rashel out in an arc and she breathed out a breath of ice air, a spell he had learnt from Eve. The Wardens shuddered and stopped in their movements for but a sunflare… time enough for Hawkmoth to pull one of Skitecrow’s Ouppluids into play. He dragged it from his belt, grated it swiftly across his forearm and speared both it and any flesh it carried from his arm into the ground. Instantly Hawkmoth’s doppelganger grew, and were fully formed by the time Grief, Pain and Sorrow kicked back into movement.
Pain’s halberd struck without warning, but Hawkmoth’s two selves danced away from it skillfully. Sorrow countered well with its morning star, almost smashing the head off the shoulders of Hawkmoth’s twin. Grief swung its mace at the real Hawkmoth. But he and his twin both leapt aside and rolled and jumped. This is how things went for a little while, the two Hawkmoth’s dancing here and there, evading strikes and hacks, deflecting near strikes with their staffs. Hawkmoth himself were working on catching one of the Wardens off guard. He had to wait his chance, to counter their tactics. They were constantly flanking he and his double, constantly trying to distract them. Then he got the opening he needed. His doppelganger had run out in front of him, catching the attention of his would be killers and here he seized his opportunity, darting in with speed, striking Sorrow in the neck with his staff and darting out again in the same instant, as Pain thrust at him with halberd. Hawkmoth deflected it with staff and leapt clear.
The strike on Sorrow had done nothing it seemed, though a blue mould began to grow down its armour and up its face plate. This blinded it and it swung wildly now at random. Hawkmoth’s twin scampered up behind it and crushed the side of its helmet inwards with a strike of its staff. The assault failed to put the Warden out of action but it were never the same after that.
Hawkmoth were free to battle but two of them now.
He found an opening and lunged at Pain, thrusting the spiked end of his staff into the being’s lower back, and leapt away, springing lithely off the shaft of its halberd. Pain appeared to show no ill effect to begin with and Hawkmoth wondered if the enchantment he had delivered would work. He rolled as he came to ground, narrowly avoiding having his skull cracked open by Grief’s mace which took out Hawkmoth’s twin, crunching the twin’s face into his skull, blood spraying out. The real Hawkmoth leapt and rolled as Grief pulled his mace from one sorcerer and swung it at the other. Hawkmoth slashed his staff at the being’s legs, hissing, ‘Putus hiss leggz tu mush!’ and Grief’s lower left leg crumpled as if molten.
Hawkmoth dashed for clear space, his twin on the ground dead. Pain leapt high and swung his halberd around in a swinging arc. Hawkmoth were just in time to duck beneath it, thrusting Rashel at it who clasped its arm in her teeth. A searing light erupted from her jaws, spitting holes through Pain’s arm, rendering it useless. Hawkmoth wrenched Rashel back and with it came her victim’s arm clenched in her mouth. Grief, hobbling, gave off a flurry of attacks and Hawkmoth rolled, leapt, dodged, reaching again for another of Skitecrow’s gadgets. He took out a Ploidoos, threw it at Grief. The metal spike buried into its chest plate.
A moment later Grief began to jerk and its torso suddenly split down the middle, from head to waist. Though on second glance its body had not actually split but grown another of itself, another torso stemming from its own waist, a torso fixed with armoured head and arms.
As this one became fully formed it began thumping the original’s torso and skull, pulling and twisting its arms. Distracted with its self-pummeling, Hawkmoth once more had but two Wardens to deal with. Sorrow, still blinded, and indiscriminately flailing its morning star. And Pain, with its remaining arm. He kept moving. Not let himself be cornered or backed up against the cage bars. He had seen many a forbidden Brother stand his ground and attempt to fight them off only to find himself pulverised.
As Hawkmoth evaded a one handed strike by Pain, Sorrow struck, taking him by complete surprise. It suggested that there were naught wrong with Sorrow’s senses. It threw its sword but what flew at Hawkmoth were a hundred daggers. Hawkmoth countered quickly with a spider’s spell that shot web, collecting them all, except for two or three that shot passed his face.
Pain ran its halberd across the snowy ground, as if cutting open some fissure in reality, and twisted grey goblins crawled out and flew on wings at Hawkmoth. Five or six of them, wielding talons and pointy teeth.
Hawkmoth had not witnessed these tactics in years passed. This were something new. Still he felt he were slowly gaining the upper hand over the Wardens and fought off the goblins with a combination of wooden shards spat out by Rashel, shards that ripped their flesh and tore their wings. They were easy enough for him to dispatch but he knew they were merely
sent as a distraction. Sure enough, Sorrow had darted behind him but Hawkmoth saw the attack at the last moment, thus he jumped and spun in the air, the morning star missing his chest by an inch. Now he dropped, rolled through snow, remaining goblins diving for him but they took the brunt of the morning star as he had anticipated. Having orchestrated the goblins’ demise he whipped his staff around, leapt from the snow, twisting and then thrusting the sharp point of his staff deep into Sorrow’s ribs.
He withdrew it and dove, rolled and came to a standstill on one knee, in time to watch Sorrow turn its weapon upon Grief, pummeling its skull. Pain rushed toward him and he made to evade the attack when a cold object pierced his chest. He looked down and amidst spurting blood he saw the tip of the halberd poking though him. He turned his head and saw he had been tricked. Pain stood behind him, and as blood poured out of him, the armoured being lifted him high like an impaled rabbit on a stick.
7
Razor squealed and bolted through the packs of Bewitched, pelting them with green molten shots of fire. He reached the cage and galloped around it as the Warden, Pain, hefted Hawkmoth in the air like a trophy.
Razor were hysterical, he would not stop screaming, galloping faster and faster around the cage. Inside Pale prod its halberd deep into the snow leaving Hawkmoth suspended.
The cage began to lower, the bars retracting back into the earyth now that the forbidden Brother were dealt with and dying. Here the Wardens began to descend back into their dens below Sanctuary, and Razor keened at the foot of the halberd.
Razor though were not done. He turned and charged the Wardens…
Though before he reached them he stopped short and he howled like a wolf, shaking them, blue streaks of light began to bursting from between his ribs, his skin splitting, his flesh ripping apart… and suddenly he exploded.
8
The blast sent Gargaron and Locke and Melai crashing into the tower, crunching the Bewitched every which way, throwing Grimah from his feet, knocking Zebra off her belly, throwing her head and neck against the tower wall.
Everything fell still.
When Gargaron lifted his head from where he lay, dazed, looking groggily about, wondering what by Ranethor just happened. Melai were back against the stairwell of the tower, rolling slowly to her side as if just waking from slumber. Locke were propped against the doorway, the expression on his face one of vacant bewilderment, as if he had just smoked a full bag of the sorcerer’s weed.
Gargaron remembered Razor and Hawkmoth. He struggled to his feet, using the doorway to steady himself. He set his gaze out across Sanctuary’s grounds and saw the snow had been blasted away in the explosion, exposing bare brown earth and straw-coloured dead grass beneath. Swirls of blue light illuminated patches of ground and snow alike, as though it were star dust. The Bewitched were scattered, silent and unmoving. But the strangest sight of all were what lay around the spot where he had last seen Razor, Hawkmoth and the Wardens.
The Wardens still stood, but were unrecognisable from their original forms. While their legs were still firmly planted on hard earyth their bodies had been rent eastways; they looked like frozen flags, like silver streaks of metal smeared out across the frigid mountain air. And Hawkmoth knelt in the bare dead grass, his head bowed forward, his face unseen. There were no sign of Razor. Naught but a shimmering figure at Hawkmoth’s feet.
Gargaron started forward. He staggered but regained his footing. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he called. ‘Be you well?’
He stepped through the uncovered bodies of sorcerers and what he guessed were witches and everywhere there were remnants of the Bewitched. There were no sound on Sanctuary but the sound of wind, lonely and mournful.
He came aware of Grimah trotting up beside him and heard Melai say distantly, ‘Fetch the sorcerer. We need leave here. I fear this place be not done with us yet.’
Gargaron neared Hawkmoth, still unsure what lay at his feet. ‘Hawkmoth? Be you well? Where be Razor?’
Hawkmoth looked up at him at last. He were bloodied and cut and his face were white, as if all blood had drained from him. ‘I be well,’ Gargaron heard him whisper. ‘I farewell my Razor.’
The statement confused Gargaron. Yet he focused on the thing at Hawkmoth’s feet. It looked a ghost. Some small angelic creature, green of eye. Hawkmoth had his hand upon it. It had but Razor’s horse face and Razor’s eyes and Razor’s horsey snout. But its small ethereal body had wings, and arms, a fore set and a rear set, long and loose and clumsy, as if just learning how to use them, as if of some deer calf recently birthed from its mother.
‘Fly now, little one,’ Hawkmoth whispered. ‘I have brought you full circle. Fly now and away. It has been an honour to be your friend.’
Distantly Gargaron heard some sound. He looked about, squinting into the misty gloom. He saw faint shapes in the mist, things scrambling, clambering over the wall. Grimah, at the giant’s side, were beginning to make noise, snorting from both noses, nostrils flapping.
‘Hawkmoth,’ Gargaron said. ‘Hawkmoth. We need leave now.’
Hawkmoth appeared not to hear. Instead he sat back and allowed the thing that were once Razor room to lift itself clumsily from the frozen ground. Thin transparent wings unfurled from its back and flapped as two lots of arms hefted its small body from the ground. It squeaked as of a newborn, flew about Hawkmoth twice before lifting away into the air.
More Bewitched were coming now. Hawkmoth remained idle, preferring to watch Razor’s new form fly off than show care for anything else.
There were no time for ceremony. Gargaron grabbed the sorcerer and hoist him to his feet. Hawkmoth were unresponsive, his body limp, his head hung low. The Bewitched, a larger breed now, Gargaron saw, taller than ones who had come before, these with legs like that of deer, charged for them. Grimah were already at a canter, and Gargaron, carrying both his great sword and Hawkmoth’s staff, were dashing alongside him, pushing the sorcerer into saddle. Now he gripped the pommel and hauled himself onto his steed just as the Bewitched closed on them.
FLIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRDS
1
GRIMAH were not need to be told to gain speed, he dug in and picked up pace, his hooves thundering across the fresh blasted ground toward the tower. Locke and Melai fired off their arrows and darts from the doorway, taking out Bewitched as they closed in on Grimah’s flanks.
‘Hurry!’ Melai shouted. ‘Hurry now!’
As Grimah closed in on the tower there came a thunderous noise and sections of Sanctuary’s perimetre wall crashed inwards. Wall fragments shot out in every direction. And Gargaron saw through the fog banks Dark Ones. Bashing down the wall and surging on into the grounds. Like Appleford Terminus these were big brutes, though rather than hammers, these hefted mobile battering rams. And while some continued to batter the wall, others strode out across Sanctuary, smashing anything and everything in their path.
Gargaron reached the tower, Melai and Locke, both still firing their projectiles, backed up the stairway.
Bewitched were again hanging off Grimah’s sides, and clinging to Gargaron’s legs, and clawing at Hawkmoth’s robes, biting, scratching, chewing off chunks of meat. Hawkmoth seemed not to notice. Sitting there in saddle as if in some stupor, showing no concern, though around him Gargaron cut and slashed with both his sword and the spiked end of Hawkmoth’s staff.
They were too numerous though and their combined weight dragged Grimah to his left, pulling him into the wall once within the tower. Gargaron and Hawkmoth spilled to floor and Grimah squealed with anger, kicking his legs to get himself upright.
It were mayhem all over again, Gargaron scrambling toward the stairwell, dragging Hawkmoth with him as the ravenous Bewitched piled up around the doorway, more coming still, flying at them with a frightening single mindedness. They snapped and bit and gnashed and clawed, Gargaron heaving dolls aside to pull Hawkmoth from beneath the mass.
‘Sorcerer!’ Gargaron yelled. ‘I’m sorry about Razor but we need you!’
He dragged Hawkmoth with one hand, slashing his great sword at Bewitched with the other, the staff held beneath his shoulder. Melai sent off continuous volleys of acid tipped arrows, the stink on the air of burning dolls both sharp and acrid. Locke blew his blow darts, causing the Bewitched to smoulder and melt. Grimah snapped and kicked, Zebra whipped her tail and struck out with her jaws.
‘Sorcerer!’ Gargaron yelled again. ‘Do you hear me?!’
Slowly, so slowly, Hawkmoth began to come round. He saw the enormous dolls snapping at him, scratching at him. Though at first he could hear them not. It were some dream to him. Until his pain began to return to him. He gasped in a mighty breath all of a sudden and looked about. He struggled to his feet, groggy.
‘There you are,’ Gargaron shouted. ‘Oh, don’t forget your staff.’
Hawkmoth took it absently and stumbled. Gargaron caught him, cutting a Bewitched in half as it leapt at them. Gargaron shoved the sorcerer up the stairway. Hawkmoth stumbled again and Melai and Locke put themselves before he and their adversaries.
2
It were a pitched battle from there to the roof of the tower, but the advantage for Gargaron and his friends were though the stairway up the tower were almost fifteen paces wide, the Bewitched could not flank them, nor attack from behind.
‘Do we still hold Mama Vekh?’ Hawkmoth said amidst the din of battle, as if he had just remembered her existence.
